You created the pollution, you clean it up. That, in essence, is the position taken by several entities regarding a long-abandoned New Haven power plant. It's the correct one.

The property is the so-called English Station, an 85-year-old New Haven power plant once owned by United Illuminating Co. Shut in 1992, it was sold by UI in 2000 to Quinnipiac Energy, a Killingworth firm that has since gone out of business.

It has long been known that the English Station site is polluted by polychlorinated biphenyls, asbestos and other carcinogens. Cleaning it up would cost a lot — as much as $8 million, UI told Quinnipiac Energy in 2000.

That, it turns out, was a lowball. An environmental study that was recently unsealed and released to The Courant shows that 15 years ago, UI had quietly estimated the actual cleanup cost at some $20 million.

The former Department of Public Utility Control allowed that study to be a "protective filing," apparently because UI said making it public would endanger the sale.

As well it might have. A former Quinnipiac Energy employee told The Courant last month that "nobody in their right mind … could conceive taking on that kind of liability."

The question of cleaning up the English Station property has again risen because state regulators are deciding whether to allow the sale of UI's parent company to the Spanish energy conglomerate Iberdrola. One issue that's part of the negotiations is the responsibility for the environmental remediation.

State Attorney General George Jepsen, the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, the city of New Haven and the lawyer for the plant's current owners have all argued that UI should set aside money for the cleanup.

UI says it wants a "reasonable dialogue" about the liability. State regulators are still deciding.

Common sense says that the polluter should pay. But whatever the outcome, the worst scenario would put the case in the courts. That would mean too much wasted time and money — for no purpose.